


Like You Expect to Drown Before Then

by victoriousscarf



Series: This Revolution of Our Blood [7]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Revolutionaries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 21:35:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/931334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/victoriousscarf/pseuds/victoriousscarf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Those will kill you, you know,” Neville remarked and Draco looked at him sideways, elbows still braced against the railing on the bridge, cigarette dangling from his fingers.</p><p>He tapped the ash into the river below, Muggle pedestrians moving behind them. “I think inspiring the Boy Who Lived to start a revolution is going to kill me first.”</p><p>“Yet you did it anyway,” Neville remarked, leaning his elbows against the railing and looking at the same distant point Draco seemed to be considering.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like You Expect to Drown Before Then

“Those will kill you, you know,” Neville remarked and Draco looked at him sideways, elbows still braced against the railing on the bridge, cigarette dangling from his fingers.

He tapped the ash into the river below, Muggle pedestrians moving behind them. “I think inspiring the Boy Who Lived to start a revolution is going to kill me first.”

“Yet you did it anyway,” Neville remarked, leaning his elbows against the railing and looking at the same distant point Draco seemed to be considering. “You really want to take credit for something like that?”

“I think I was righteously furious enough toward him for a while,” Draco shrugged, shifting the shoulders of his black jacket on his shoulders. “For everything he still carries around a surprisingly large amount of illusions.”

Neville sighed, pushing his hair back from his face. It had once been orderly and always combed back but after his final year at Hogwarts he’d let it go. “He’s still a child.”

Eyes sliding sideways again, Draco arched a brow. Neville wondered where his self confidence had come from in the last several months. Perhaps finally finding a cause had settled that jagged hurt that had been so obvious in him. “We’re all legally adults,” Draco remarked and Neville snapped his attention away from wondering when Draco stopped behind a bully scared of his own shadow.

“That doesn’t mean much,” Neville said. “What does that mean? Everyone becomes an adult on exactly the same day? A little fairy drops out of the sky and gives you all the maturity you need for the rest of your life?”

Draco snorted, taking another drag of his cigarette and watching the smoke curl up toward the cloudy London sky. “Alright then. He also fought the Dark Lord and won.”

“You don’t have to be an adult to do that either,” Neville said.

Turning his entire head, Draco cocked it to one side. “So when did you become an adult then?”

“When I decided to stand and fight,” he said and more bitterness leaked into his voice than he had ever meant. “Harry _ran_. I know why, I know what he did and that he had to do it. But he didn’t see the battle, he didn’t see the slow grind of fighting every day to stay alive and keep everyone else alive.” Neville looked away, wishing Draco would go back to looking over the water. “I had to protect those children because no one else could and I should have died a hundred different ways that year but I kept holding on, sometimes by my fingernails.”

“Have I ever thanked you,” Draco said after a beat. “For beheading that fucking snake?”

Neville looked over in shock. “No… no I don’t think you ever did.”

“Then thank you,” Draco said, smiling as he inclined his head. “For beheading that fucking snake. I hated that thing.”

Considering him, Neville frowned. “That year…”

“I admit I wasn’t doing much to protect others,” Draco said softly. “I was far too out of favor for not succeeding in my task to kill Dumbledore to be able to risk anything. There were werewolves itching to eat me and snakes slithering around my dining room table. Now, I always loved the emblem of Slytherin but to have an actual snake that obviously wouldn’t mind taking a bite out of my arm? That’s different.”

“It was a scary snake,” Neville admitted.

“But you stood up to it and cut its head off anyway,” Draco said and paused a beat. “I think if my eleven year old self could see me now he’d off himself in shame, but I have to say I admire you for it.”

Neville choked in air. “I never expected to hear you say that.”

“I never expected to say it,” Draco said, gesturing widely with his hands. “Go figure. We’re all surprising ourselves now.”

“So you grew up then too,” Neville said.

“I should have died too,” he said. “There were enough times were I think only the fact my father had been _so_ _loyal_ kept me alive. I failed, I’d been a disgrace and I couldn’t even identify Harry Potter when he was dragged in front of my face. By the battle, I don’t think I was even trying. I needed Potter to win so I wouldn’t die.”

They both looked out the river again, Neville swallowing hard. “So we both should have died. Why can’t we just, I don’t know, curl up at home and pretend that we won our war and nothing will touch us again?”

“Because we know it’s not true,” Draco replied softly. “Because I’ve closed my eyes and ears for years but you haven’t and you know it’s not true. If we let this go now what will our children face?”

“But it wouldn’t be _us,_ ” Neville said. “It wouldn’t be the children I kept alive dying now.”

Draco turned his entire body to look at him. “Some generation has to make that stand.”

“I know,” he said finally. “That’s why I’m here. But I don’t want to be. I wish to anything it was someone else.”

“What would you do?” Draco asked, tone idle but eyes serious. “If you could close your eyes and pretend everything was fine?”

“I’d go back to Hogwarts,” Neville said and Draco’s brows shot up in surprise. “I know what I saw and experienced there was terrible but… it was home,” he said. “When this is over I still hope to go back there someday. The professors there changed my life and I only hope that I could do the same to some young and hurting child. I want to protect children and teach them to be better.”

“Home,” Draco repeated and it sounded wistful. Neville wondered if any teacher had dared to take Draco under their wing and coax him to be better. Snape had shoved him and snarled at him, but Neville knew it wouldn’t have been the same as the way Professor Sprout guided his hands or the way he’d seen Dumbledore talk to Harry. “That must be nice.”

“It is,” Neville admitted quietly. “It’s wonderful.”

“Maybe if we survive this,” Draco said, pushing himself back from the railing, letting the last of the ash from the cigarette fall into the waters below.

“You sound like you expect to drown before then,” Neville said, watching him as he threw his head back and laughed, the sound making something deep inside him ache from the echo of pain.

“I think that’s because I fully expect to,” Draco said and walked off, black coat melding into the crowd of muggles. Leaning his back against the railing, Neville looked after him for a long time before tilting his head back to look at the grey sky above.

Luna spoke to him sometimes like the world was a puzzle and she was fitting the pieces together in ways that he could not imagine. Like there were still wonders and beautiful things and he loved to watch her when she moved. But he’d never expected to hear Draco fitting those same pieces together either.

He had Luna, he had a place he knew he would return to and call home and those were the things he would always fight for. Because if Luna ever had a child, he would kill to keep it safe, whether it was ever his or not. He would fight for any child that crossed his path, throwing his own body in the way of their pain.

But he’d never noticed the way Draco was wilting like a plant with no care before.

He wondered how many other children had wilted in the same way. He’d come so close once himself, under his grandmother who loved him but never really saw him.

“So we keep fighting,” he told the sky. He was not sure why he had sought Draco out after leaving Harry’s, with their quiet pact to hold the torch up and keep going. But Draco’s fury was smoldering under his skin and no one else could have made his convictions so strong so quickly.

He turned and melded into the crowd the opposite direction from Draco, old habits already surfacing as he walked. He’d survived Hogwarts, he would survive this battle too.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Written with "Home" by Ellie Goulding on repeat


End file.
